


ratiocination

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death, Execution, Extra Treat, F/M, First Kiss, Time Skips, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love, Vignettes, implied suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 11:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8325217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: His life exists on a fixed schedule with a fixed ending. He hasn’t the luxury of principles any longer.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mossy_Bench](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mossy_Bench/gifts).



**Day One**

Ransolm’s not sure what he expected, but as far as prisons go… this one could be worse.

**Day Thirty**

_“It is clear to me,”_ Carise says, her image ghostly blue and lined through horribly with interference, _“that this Republic no longer serves the high ideals to which I—and my fellow Centrists—expect from Senate leadership. We have faced up to the corruption within our own ranks; no one aches more than I to know that one of the best amongst us was a traitor. And yet the Populists will not do the same within their party. One does not simply lose the most visible face of the galaxy’s political landscape, no matter how much she might prefer to turn and run. Let us speak plainly: Leia Organa is a coward hiding behind Mon Mothma’s rapidly thinning skirts until she might once again attack everything the Republic has built since the Empire’s collapse. Lest we forget, she is the_ daughter _of a war criminal, a powerful Sith Lord, and a dangerous woman with connections the galaxy over all her own. Her brother is off who knows where training disciples who might well be used to meet her ends rather than ours. It is past time we demand answers of—”_

Ransolm stabs at the holovid unit built into the wall, the miniscule projection it emits guttering out of existence along with Carise’s pristinely cultivated voice, the cracks presumably only visible to those who know her well enough to realize she is barely keeping her rage at bay. He can sympathize. Truly. The audacity with which she speaks? It staggers him even here, half the Inner Rim away from her and Hosnian Prime and his life’s calling, his life’s work.

To think the people he called his colleagues, his _friends_ , reduced to this—this fear mongering, this profiteering, this… this…

Oh, yes. He understands her rage. He feels it himself.

It takes fifteen paces to cross the length of his cell on a normal day.

He does it in ten. And does it again. And again and again and again. He does it until he loses count of the number of steps he’s taken. He does it until he forgets everything but the measured slap of soft-soled shoe against hard duracrete. He does it until his heart pounds and sweat prickles on his forehead and his blood throbs in his ears, the only form of timekeeping offered to him for more than an hour at a time, when he is granted access to the holoprojector.

Were he not so weak, he would seek out something else to watch or read or use the thing not at all, but even a thin thread connecting him to his old life is a connection he cannot forsake.

His life exists on a fixed schedule with a fixed ending. He hasn’t the luxury of principles any longer.

It’s not even the way she speaks of him as though he is trash that has been properly disposed of, no. No, it’s her intimation that Leia is a villain in this, a scourge upon the Republic, when she has been its greatest hero…

That is what bothers him.

That is, when later he tries to sleep, the thing that keeps him up late enough in Riosa’s cycle that the sun has begun to rise again before he settles into an uneasy rest. Leia should not have to explain herself to Carise or anyone else. She should not be hauled in front of people who’ve done nothing to assist the people of the Republic to be judged and humiliated further.

If Leia has disappeared for good, which Ransolm is certain she has not, he could not blame her.

If he blames himself, well, that is between him and these walls and they aren’t likely to share his secrets. They retain no memory save the echo of his own voice off of them and even that dissolves in mere moments. He wishes he could forget so easily, too. It might make the rest of his time here more bearable.

**Day Thirty-Seven**

_“Reports are now claiming that Leia Organa may have engaged in a—”_

**Day Thirty-Eight**

He doesn’t check the holofeeds today, and he feels better than he has in quite some time for having refrained. If it mattered, he’d call it a moral decision. But it doesn’t matter. This place cares nothing for morality. Instead, all he has is his pride and the willpower he’s scraped together out of nothing.

It’s enough to get him through the day.

Perhaps he will do the same tomorrow.

**Day Thirty-Nine**

He doesn’t do the same. And what he hears is no surprise. Yet each word is like a knife held to his throat, holding his voice at bay, a voice that no one of consequence will hear no matter how much he yells.

**Day Forty-Three**

The media continues to call for Leia’s rebuttal to Carise’s scathing rants. They would stop, he thinks, except that Carise finds a new way to question Leia’s loyalty, her honor, her spirit with every rotation of Hosnian Prime around its sun. There is always a new scandal, each more despicable than the last, so much so that Ransolm can’t listen to it without a flurry of impotent rage shooting through him. Uncharacteristic rage, useless rage. Rage that, were he still a senator, he would have turned upon those who are now lashing out in his absence. He would splinter his own party for every slight against Leia if he had to. This is not what they are supposed to be. They are better than this. He would remake them. He’d had that power before; he just hadn’t realized it.

Every accusation chips away at Leia’s image, previously etched in marble in Ransolm’s mind, fierce and beloved in its own way, but cold and distant.

So he’s taken to parceling out his memories of her in brief bursts, small and wickedly pointed, sharp enough to pierce his anger, but not enough to permanently injure him. Every time he turns over a memory in his mind, he finds some new facet of her to admire. Her loyalty, her honor, her _spirit_ all take on such grand proportions that Ransolm can scarce breathe around it. She exists alongside him in this cell almost, his companion for fifteen minutes, twenty, sometimes an hour when he feels especially low. It has become the only thing that can calm him at times like these.

Why he thinks _I love you_ on this of all days, he cannot say, but the admission prickles behind his eyes and doubles him over, spine curved painfully forward, elbows between his knees as he covers his face with his hands. His lungs press against the constricting cage of ribs around them, a vain protest as his ribs can only accommodate so much, the enormity of the admission far bigger than he wants to wrap his thoughts around.

 _I love you_.

He knows nothing of what her braided hair might feel like beneath his fingertips, how she chooses to take her caf, nor even what she likes best to do when she relaxes, yet he loves her like he’s never loved anyone.

Love should not hurt this much.

**Day Forty-Five**

Surely the wall doesn’t know what’s hit it when he returns to his cell two days later, a bacta high singing through every one of his nerves. His hand is a throbbing, purpled mess, but he cannot feel it and, more importantly, he’s too busy not being in pain to concern himself with anything else.

If a destructive mark is to be left behind in his name, let it be for something he has actually done. Even if it is nothing more than a tiny dent in the wall of a prison cell far, far away from the people he cares about. At least he’s done something.

He hasn’t felt this out-of-control since he was a child. Or hadn’t before the infirmary anyway. Now he takes to his cot, lazing on it while he stares at the ceiling, humming off-key, his leg crossed over the opposite knee, ankle swaying along to the tuneless music of Ransolm’s voice.

Perhaps this is what he should have been doing all along.

It would be easier than accepting the truth.

**Day Forty-Six**

_“Leia Org—”_

**Day Fifty**

His advocate stares at him from across the transparent partition, safe from this predicament he’s found himself in. He doesn’t resent her exactly, though he could do without the pity she betrays to him in the hazel of her eyes when he catches them with his own—less and less often as the days go by. She doesn’t need to speak to tell him what he already knows, so he doesn’t ask. One last charitable gesture to make up for how uncharitable he might have been in the past to another woman. Though her eyes are not so light. And her demeanor never pitying.

There is one question she might still answer though.

“Have you any messages for me?”

She shakes her head. “No, Mr. Casterfo.”

He hadn’t expected her to say yes, but that doesn’t stop his heart from rattling against his ribcage in protest. _It’s not fair,_ he thinks. _It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. I’m not—_

_Not what?_

He doesn’t let himself answer the question. And he doesn’t let the woman across from him speak further. Standing, chair scraping violently against the floor, he bows slightly. Hair falling into his eyes, he says, “I suppose I won’t be needing your services any further then, will I?”

He hates the hitch in his voice that cannot be otherwise accounted for. He hates the resignation he sees on his advocate’s face. He hates that he’s here and doesn’t even know why or who or what. _Fight, damn it,_ his mind rails at her, screams, cries. _Fight for me._

“I’m sorry,” she says, still seated.

His mouth cracks open in a smile the rest of him doesn’t recognize as happy, but must appear cheerful if the furrowing of her brow is anything to go by. “That’s quite all right. There’s not much helping a traitor.” His eyes search the room behind her. Devoid of life, of color, of flair, it’s much the same as the side on which he stands. And yet he’s sure it feels so very different. “If you hear—”

“Yes?” Leaning forward, she pushes herself to the edge of her chair, climbs to her feet, too. Eager.

“—no, nothing.” The words are barely a whisper when he speaks them. Turning, he shuffles toward the door, nods at the guard standing next to it, ready with a blaster. For a moment, Ransolm wants to give him a reason. “Good bye, Miss.”

He doesn’t wait to hear her farewell in return. Doesn’t even know if she’s heard him. Doesn’t much care.

**Night Fifty**

Blaster fire pings in the hallway outside his cell. Scuffles and shouts amplified in the silence. A bang. A crash. He remains on his cot, every inch of him both exhausted and enervated. Straining to hear, he waits, hardly breathing. _Could it be…_

Scrapes. Yells. The sounds are louder now. Closer. And by the time he’s sure the noise is going to deafen him, he’s up, hands pressed against the locked door. There’s no window out of which to see, so all he can do is wait, head bent forward.

He prays. He’s not sure to whom or to what, but he does.

When the door slides open, he’s not at all surprised to see Leia, resplendent in the uniform of a Republic general, the dark color harsh against the paleness of her skin. A braid forms a crown around her head, somehow both soft and severe at the same time. She’s never looked so beautiful.

She peers, humor tugging at her lips, into the place he has called home for what feels like forever, though really it has only been a month—Riosan, not galactic. “I’m here to rescue you.” She says it so proudly, with so much amusement that he thinks maybe she’s been waiting to say that to someone for a long time.

He’s grateful, so very Force-damned grateful, that she’s chosen to say it to him. Barking a laugh, giddy and pained and frenzied all at once, he says, “I can see that.”

Someone calls from further down the hall. She waves her hand. Shouts back that it’ll just be a minute. “You don’t have much time to decide, Ransolm.”

“I know, I—” And because she’s _saved_ him and he’s beyond rational thought, he reaches for her. Cups her face. Brushes his thumbs over her cheeks. Her eyelids flutter shut and he—

He kisses her.

Brief, because there will be time enough later to—to figure it out, figure himself out, to apologize for such a brazen act, and it’s _enough_. This. Now. Because she smiles and rolls her eyes and beckons him forward. And it’s almost as though the outline of her mouth is imprinted on his because he remembers the shape of it, even as she drags him into the hall, even as—

Even as he wakes up.

**Day Fifty-One**

“Any requests?” the warden asks him, perfunctory, mind on things, a datapad held against his forearm, fingers tapping away at it. This Riosan apparently cares little for galactic politics. Even the moniker ‘traitor’ apparently isn’t enough to do more than bring him down to do the least of his duties. At one time, Ransolm had considered this provision a mercy. One last offer of comfort before—

Well, he knows better now.

“No,” he says.

That sparks curiosity at least, the warden’s eyes narrowing. He looks at Ransolm as though he’s seeing him for the first time. Then, shrugging, he answers, still somewhat dubious, “Suit yourself. You’ll have a chance to speak if—”

There is so much he has to say.

And no one to say it to.

Spine rigid, he tips his chin up. Dares the warden to judge him for this, too. “That won’t be necessary.”

The warden does not disappoint. “O—kay.” Taps at his datapad. Gestures at the guard standing beside him, shrugs toward the exit. They march down the hallway, abandoning Ransolm for the first—and last—time. The sound of blaster fire trails them, an echo of his dream from the night before, nothing more, but the remembrance of it is enough nearly to send him to the floor.

*

His midday meal, when it arrives, is perfunctory. He forces himself to taste it, seize one last bit of life where he can, he supposes.

He regrets immediately that the last bit of life he tastes is stewed tubers from the yard outside slathered in a bland gravy made from who knows what, but it seems his entire existence has come down to shooting himself in the foot, heedless of the consequences until they confront him and not the other way.

It’s almost enough to make him laugh.

*

In those last hours, he paces.

A lot.

And doesn’t let himself hope.

It’s funny how much faster an hour, a minute, a _second_ seems when you’ve run out of them.

*

“Are you sure you don’t have anything you want to say?” the warden asks, his voice floating to Ransolm from over his shoulder. They’re staring out onto the yard—not the portion of the yard where the tubers come from, thankfully—a wide stretch of dirt and a plain, gray duracrete wall at the end of it. Right now, they are safe behind a glass partition, the door out still further down.

He knows what he’s supposed to do, what he’s meant to do, but his knees, his legs, his mind—they all rebel, disconnected from the reality of the situation he must face.

 _I loved you,_ he thinks. _I thought you would…_

There’s nothing he could say now that wouldn’t hurt Leia—if his words even managed to reach her—so: “No.” He swallows, coughs, clears his throat. Swallows again for all the good it does. His throat is dry. “There’s nothing.”

With hands far gentler than Ransolm expects, the warden guides him toward the door. Even when Ransolm hesitates, his heels reluctant to lift, the warden does little more than urge him forward. They haven’t told him what’s going to happen, but he knows all the same.

He helped write the law after all.

He is to walk and walk and walk. One step at a time.

 _Please_.

A step.

Another.

The sound of blaster fire. Real this time.

A stumble.

 _Leia_.


End file.
